this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
78 points (91.5% liked)
Games
19864 readers
421 users here now
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
- News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
- Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
- No humor/memes etc..
- No affiliate links
- No advertising.
- No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
- No self promotion.
- No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
- No politics.
Comments.
- No personal attacks.
- Obey instance rules.
- No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
- Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
Other communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
My view is if you don't like a distribution platform taking 20-30% of the sale then don't use that distribution platform. It's a free market and a free internet. Use Epic, GOG, or host it yourself
If I don't like what Comcast charges I don't do a class action lawsuit.
That's a poor example, because in many markets, Comcast (or another cable provider) is the only option, or there's only one other option with much lower top-end speeds (e.g. DSL). So a class-action against Comcast may be a reasonable idea, since they're an actual monopoly in many markets.
The games industry is different. Steam does have a commanding share of the market, but there's no real lock-in there, a developer can choose to not publish there and succeed. Minecraft, famously, never released on Steam, and it has been wildly successful. Likewise for Blizzard games, like Starcraft and World of Warcraft.
Maybe a better comparison is grocery store chains? Walmart has something like 60% market share in the US, yet I have successfully been able to completely avoid shopping there.
It’s maybe a poor example, but it is what the plaintiff is alleging, so I think it is a good analogy
Excuse my frank speech but that's absolute bollocks and lacks any understanding at all of how a monopoly works.
E: It's so hilarious to watch the Lemmy idiots be like "lEaVe ThE mUlTiBiLlIoN dOlLaR cOmPaNy AlOnE!" when it comes to Nintentdo but when it's Valve, then it's totally cool for some reason.
Is there a monopoly though?
Other store fronts exist. They are usable and often sell the same games. It's not Nestle owning half the food options in every food store, this is whole foods, vs all the other grocery stores.
You can get game pass and stream your games and never own them past your subscription lasts.
Or the Microsoft game store which isn't great but exists. GOG gives you installers and has big games on it.
Fanatical, GMG, Humble Bundle, are all store fronts. You could even consider Nintendo and PlayStation to have their own game storefronts while needing their hardware.
Is Steam a monopoly?
Monopoly does not mean no other businesses exist.
Sure but it means there is no other competition though. That could be price collusion but epic takes a completely different cut amount and other stores have different prices for games.
Just because other definitions exist doesn't answer the question, it avoids it by saying something else entirely.
Is Steam a monopoly?
Not correct either. Do you think Google has no competition?
This is a whataboutism.
Is steam a monopoly and how?
I don't think you understand what a whataboutism is.
I don't know why you keep asking me this question when I already answered it in my first comment. Yes, Steam is a monopoly, because they hold the overwhelming marketshare of PC gaming.
Your first comment in this chain that I am responding to is
Which is not a definition and thus why I am asking. You have not yet defined it yet seem insistent that it is.
And a whataboutism is when you bring up a parallel or comparable topic in an attempt to shift it. You brought up google in a discussion about Steam/Valve. That very much is.
Having a large user base is not a monopoly. Hershey doesn't have a monopoly on chocolate for being the popular choice. People can and will at any time use competing products.
I remember, thanks.
You didn't ask me for a definition.
I know what a whataboutism is. You dont. This is called an "example". An example of a company that was legally ruled a monopoly but also has competition.
You're missing the larger discussion around monopolies, and you're mad because I disproved your position. You also didn't answer my question while simultaneously repeatedly demanding that I answer yours.
You're obviously just misrepresenting the statement I just made in the comment you just replied to.
I think it's pretty clear at this point that you have no intention of a good faith discussion so I'm not going to entertain this any further.
You didn't answer the questions and said you did then turn and said it was my fault for not agreeing with you.
You didn't state how they are a monopoly you just wanted the agreement. You didn't state how your comparison related just figured it would be obvious.
You are being a hypocrite and stating your actions on me for asking follow ups.
Do not blame me for not being able to converse when you are the one refusing to participate in a meaningful way.
You are upset that a platform is popular. That is the text of your argument as it is read. Change your argument if you aren't getting your point across. This is just deflection to protect your own conceptions.
Try to actually disprove people next time instead of saying it's their fault for not understanding and leaving. It doesn't do anything other than waste your time.
The PC is an open platform. Even more so with Linux. Steam doesn't force exclusivity, you're free to host your game on Steam for discoverability while also self-distributing or using other storefronts. Valve's 30% is a price that a studio chooses to pay, because they know that a ton of PC gamers like buying games on Steam.
If all you want out of a storefront is a payment processor, CDN, and possibly DRM, you can release on Steam, Epic, Itch, GOG, or all at once. You pick Steam (or Steam+others) instead of others because you know that enough PC gamers are willing to pay for your game on Steam, because they like Steam. Epic can tout its small cuts or exclusivity bonuses or "zero percent cuts on the first $x" deals, but game devs know that 100% of revenue on an Epic launch week is going to be a lower absolute number than 70% of revenue on a Steam one.
Hell, if Steam did lower their cut to undercut Epic (which they absolutely could do, especially since they don't have any shareholders and thus just need to be profitable instead of demonstrating YoY growth), that would be a more "monopolistic" move in the PC gaming space. Remember, the alleged monopoly is over devs, not users. As a dev, the only reason you'd ever consider Epic instead of Steam for your game is that generous profit-share ratio. Steam could remove that only advantage overnight if it wanted to "compete", and doesn't. Valve will settle for winning exclusively on the merit of "being a platform that doesn't suck, and hasn't sucked for 20 years, and doesn't have financial motivation to start sucking now". Because Valve isn't beholden to shareholder value, if they lowered their cuts to 10%, that ten billion in revenue would be closer to three billion... Which absolutely covers every employee's salary, the hosting and bandwidth costs of their CDN, and material costs for their hardware. Instead, they consistently reinvest in not just sitting there doing nothing and also not ever sacrificing user experience for number go up. Steam Machines and the Steam Controller could fail without bringing down Valve. The Index and Deck could be produced at scale and aimed at niche audiences because hey, they could afford a failure.
No its not. Its a fee they have to pay because they have no other option, because Steam is a monopoly. Even CDPR, who literally owns their own game store, lists their games on Steam, because there's no way they could ever be successful without it.
CDPR judges that selling on Steam is enough of a boost that it's worth the cost. Riot (for example) doesn't. If you think every game company or indie studio feels mandated to use Steam, that's a hugely consolebrained take. Nintendo has a monopoly. Want your game on Switch? Follow Nintendo's terms and list on Nintendo's store. Apple has a monopoly, challenged recently. Want your app on iPhone? Follow Apple's terms and list on Apple's store. Want your game on Windows PC? Upload an EXE somewhere. Sell a disc. Run your own launcher. Or license out to Steam/Epic/whoever.
The only reason you get more sales on Steam is because the PC gaming userbase overwhelmingly prefers Steam. Hell, I play Guild Wars 2, a 12 year old MMO that "launched" on Steam a couple years ago. You can still buy and play that game without any third parties getting involved at all, and always could. It doesn't have any Steam achievements, doesn't benefit from any Steam features, and has a decade old community in spaces other than Steam ones. ArenaNet decided that exposure via Steam recommendations was worth losing $x/player to list on Steam.
If Steam had an exclusivity clause, that'd be another matter entirely. As it stands, listing on Steam doesn't prevent you from also listing your game elsewhere or bypassing the entire storefront middleman scheme.
I literally just explained this in the comment you just replied to.
You can upload it wherever you want and create whatever launcher you want, you will be unsuccessful. Fucking EA did this for 8 years, failed, and went back to Steam. As did Ubisoft. You simply won't be successful without Steam. That's what a monopoly is.
Ah yes. Massively unsuccessful games like... checks notes League of Legends. World of Warcraft. Fortnite: Battle Royale.
The magic part of the PC is that if your independently distributed game does fail, you can still, after the fact, decide to slap it on someone's storefront in a desperate attempt for eyeballs - see Overwatch 2. Why not double dip? It only costs you hypothetical money you haven't made yet. Am I supposed to be sad that E fucking A failed to install their shareholder value store on my computer?
These games are both about as old as Steam itself. Their playerbase was created in a different market.
No, you're just supposed to recognize why it failed.
For me, it failed because I wasn't willing to install some shareholder-driven company's storefront app on my computer just to play Mass Effect 3, so I pirated Mass Effect 3. Then I got to watch it fail because it turns out I wasn't the only one willing to skip/pirate games because they came with Origin attached to them.
Epic's exclusives are the exact same.
I get my PC games from five sources. Steam, GOG's website, Itch's website, standalone launchers (I'd probably be okay with a "store" of games as small as the Riot launcher, but I don't use that because I don't install rootkit anticheat), and piracy. Launcherless Itch and GOG have convenience parity with piracy with the added benefit of the devs getting paid (and the ease of acquiring updates), and I'll usually use them over Steam if available. Itch could easily get bought by a corp like Humble did and CDPR is already a shareholder value company, but they sell DRM-free products that I can use even after the stores die / sell out.
A recent launch I paid for and didn't use Steam for is "The Bazaar" - it has a standalone launcher. The game went pay to win so I uninstalled it, but its lack of presence on Steam didn't keep me from playing it.
I'll use stuff other than Steam no problem. But I'll always cheer when a platform owned and operated by a shareholder backed company dies in favor of one that isn't. My experience in the hobby space of PC gaming is better when there aren't exclusives locked on EA Origin or UPlay or Microsoft UWP store or Epic, because I might want to play those games without installing a stock-ticker company's adware on my computer. Having the space "capitalism free" is unrealistic, unless we're talking "pirate everything". I'll settle for "profit driven" over "YOY growth driven" leaders in the space any day of the week.
Now, if Steam's position as the best distributor/launcher platform is a de facto "monopoly", what's the solution to that? Anecdotally I know plenty of people that play non-Steam games while not playing any Epic games. Epic tries to fight Steam by directly paying developers to not publish on Steam, and also effectively guaranteeing studios a financial success by cutting a deal to put their game up for "free" on the Epic storefront. Plenty of games have been "Free" on Epic while full price on Steam. Valve tries to fight Epic by... Acting like Epic doesn't exist. They don't chase exclusives or get into a price war with Epic.
Steam is the most popular platform for PC game releases. A subset of users will not consider ever using other platforms. If we accept this as the definition of "monopoly" the way we'd say Windows has a monopoly on x64 PCs, how would changing the revenue split for devs (which appears to be the issue this company's suing Valve over) alleviate this "monopoly"? Sounds to me like forcing Steam to explicitly allow "the game is more expensive on Steam" tactics would just make Steam even more of a no-brainer for devs over stuff like Epic or their own platform.
You could say that paying the devs/studios a better cut is the point, and I'd see the validity in the argument. But it's completely unrelated to whether or not Valve operates as a monopoly.
Everyone is not you
If there weren't enough people put off by Origin and uPlay to not install them or use them to buy games, Origin and uPlay would still exist. Steam didn't kill them, all it did was exist and be a better platform that people actually wanted to use. There's a whole graveyard of companies that tried to make "our own Steam". Fucking Discord tried to do it. What's that going to do for a marketplace where you're selling "licenses" to users? What good's your licensed copy of Fallout New Vegas on Amazon Prime Games Launcher when that launcher no longer exists? Say what you will about Steam, most people are pretty confident it'll still be around in eight years.
If there weren't enough people put off by the Epic Games Store, the EGS wouldn't still be paying developers to put their shit on the store. Steam hasn't killed it, and isn't even attempting to kill it. It's just existing and being a better platform that people actually want to use. If EGS can't compete with Steam while giving shit away for free, that's not a "Steam monopoly" it's an indicator of how dogshit the opinion of Epic as a corporation and storefront is.
Origin failed because nobody wanted it. uPlay failed because nobody wanted it. The perks (being able to buy exclusives) weren't worth the downsides (literally just making another account and installing another program on your computer). I think that's beautiful. I hope it happens to Epic next.
Steam's existence as an IPO/enshittification-proof platform has prevented the PC gaming storefront market from going the way of Netflix. Remember that? We had cable channels, pay-per-views, piracy, and VHS/DVDs/blu-rays as the only way to watch movies at home. Then a Blockbuster-over-mail company started getting licenses to let you pay to watch movies at home with one subscription, which was a massive success. Then every other IP holder went "hey wait, why are we paying Netflix when we could just eat the whole pie ourselves" and now we have Netflix Disney+ Max Peacock AppleTV+ Amazon Prime Video Fandango Paramount+ AMC+ Philo Hulu Tubi Fubo Dippy Weeno Poob all trying to be the new Netflix. And because Netflix itself is a shareholder-value-driven company, it's putting ads in its paid product and jacking up prices and paying for exclusivity.
Y'know what people do seem to like? Microsoft Gamepass. I'll never install it myself, same reason I'll never install the Epic Games Store. But Microsoft is using an even less consumer friendly strategy (timed access to games with a subscription) to propose the same "upsides" as EGS (you don't have to pay full price for games).
If you lose access to a vast majority of the market if you don‘t use a service, it’s a monopoly. Don’t defend monopolists.
Steam does nothing to prevent running non-steam games on any platform. Charge 20-30% extra on Steam and call it done.
Steam doesn't let you do that. This is literally what the lawsuit is about.
Sure. Not being able to sell literal Steam keys on other platforms for less on other platforms for less according to the terms is the same as being prevented from selling on other platforms for less at all, nevermind that Valve gets a 0% cut on Steam Key Sales made like so.
Also, there is no mention of said policy in either the OP article, nor the separate article about the lawsuit it links to.
Nobody said anything about Steam keys. They don't let you sell games at lower prices, period.
Are you being serious, right now? The source isn't 2 clicks away so therefore it doesn't exist? Lawsuits are literally public knowledge. You should inform yourself about a topic before you get into a conversation about it.
Here. Perhaps you can stop defending the billion dollar company now.
As far as I can tell, the lawsuit alleges that steam threatened pulling their (wolfire games) steam sales if they sold elsewhere for cheaper. Which would be bad if true. However, this does not appear to be anywhere in steam's actual seller agreement. The only clause in that agreement is about steam keys being sold for cheaper, which is why the other poster was focusing on that.
That allegation seems to be that steam in practice is threatening things that are outside of the contract itself.
Edit: I read the emails from the lawsuit discovery (page 160–) and it seems like most of them are about steam keys and their policy on that, which seems more reasonable. But there are definitely a few emails that explicitly go beyond that
Which seems pretty straightforward. Some of the other emails also imply that they might choose not to sell the game at all on steam if you do that.
The allegations of the plaintiff are not necessarilly the written or enforced policies of the defendant. Please consider linking something of substance when accusing others of being un-serious/insincere.
You made a claim without linking to it in the first place. Its not my job to substantiate your arguments.
Ah, the classic spoon-feed me the answer or it doesn't count as a source. Learn to use the internet, you're not a child.
You honestly think I didn't do a google search before reading the two relavent articles reachable from the OP? Nothing I found, nor the fact that I regularly buy games/steam!keys cheaper than via steam, meshes with the plaintiff's claims.
Telling others to act like grown-ups while accepting un-founded claims that happen to reflect your argument at face-value, how very mature of you.
I know you didn't google anything or you would have said "nothing I found substantiates your point" instead of "these specific two articles don't say what you said".
But let's assume you're not lying and you did look up the situation. What's your claim then? That Steam has no price veto policy or that they don't abuse it? Because one is wrong and the other is incredibly naive. Talk about taking unfounded claims at face value.
Also, why do you keep bringing up Steam Keys? That has nothing to do with anything. Focus.
You don't know shit. My search turned up nothing more concrete than your own apeing of the plaintiff's claims as though those were evidence, so I didn't bother.
Meanwhile, the subject at hand quite literally revolves around Steam and Steam-Keys. We don't even have to get into third-party distribution without Steam-Keys to disprove your argument, although that market also remains alive and well as ever.
The rest was just me matching your energy, but I'm not exaggerating when I say I should have just blocked your belligerent ass a while ago. You can't be bothered to prove your own points, yet keep pretending to be the most "mature" and "focused" person here. It's painful to watch the trolling this far off the rails.
Your search turned up nothing because you searched for nothing. Steam Keys are irrelevant here, you only keep bringing them up to derail the discussion to a greyer area where you can better defend your beloved corporate overlord. This was always about the price veto policy. Very telling how you flat out refuse to even address anything regarding that topic. Grow up.
Bye now.
Bye.
It‘s not about platform compatibility or difference in fees. It‘s about the necessity to go through Steam (at competitive prices) and bow to whatever they may come up with in the future. The generic danger of a monopoly.